Oleg Vasiltsov
SMART CITY TECHNOLOGIES: LEISURE AND ENTERTAINMENT EVENT-BASED SERVICE
1st Supervisor/Examiner: Prof. Ajantha Dahanayake PhD, LUT
2nd Supervisor/Examiner: Assoc. Prof., Zudilova Tatiana PhD, ITMO University
Lappeenranta – Saint-Petersburg 2018
Title: Smart city technologies: leisure and entertainment event-based search engine prototype Department: LUT School of Business and Management, Innovation and Software
ITMO University, Software Development Chair, Faculty of Infocommunication Technologies
Master’s Programme:
Double Degree Programme between LUT Computer Science and ITMO Software in Infocommunications
Year: 2018
Master's thesis: Lappeenranta University of Technology ITMO University
57 pages, 7 tables, 21 figures, 5 appendices Examiners: Prof. Ajantha Dahanayake PhD, LUT
Assoc. Prof., Zudilova Tatiana PhD, ITMO Keywords: Smart city, event organization, leisure
Nowadays people have a wide range of available leisure and entertainment options. However, with the development of modern technologies people prefer spending their free time in the Internet instead of meeting with their families and friends that lead to the growing feeling of loneliness. Especially this is the case for smart cities. Such feelings can lead to more serious problems with both physical and mental health.
The possible solution is event-based social networks. There are a lot of event based social networks, however none of them are suitable for leisure topic. The purpose of this work is determination of requirements for creating an optimal service for real-life meeting organization. The service will encourage people with the same interests to develop their social interaction skills while enjoying their favorite hobbies in the like-minded collective.
Диссертация: Лаппеенрантский Технологический Университет, Университет ИТМО
57 страниц, 7 таблиц, 21 рисунок, 5 приложений Экзаменаторы: Профессор Аджанта Даханайаке, ЛТУ
Доцент, к.т.н. Татьяна Зудилова, ИТМО Ключевые слова: умный город, организация событий, досуг
В настоящее время у людей есть широкий выбор доступных развлечений и развлечений. Однако с развитием современных технологий люди предпочитают проводить свободное время в Интернете, сводя живое общение к минимуму. Особенно этот тренд касается концепции умного города.
Подобный подход может привести к серьезным проблемам как с физическим, так и психическим здоровьем. Возможное решение — это социальные сети, основанные на событиях. Существует множество социальных сетей, основанных на событиях, однако все они имеют существенные недостатки относительно организации досуга. Целью данной работы является определение ключевых требований для создания оптимального сервиса для организации досуга вне сети. Сервис будет направлен на побуждение к общению у людей с одинаковыми интересами, с целью развития социальных навыков в обстановке занятия любимым делом.
1.2. Research objectives and questions ...9
1.3. Research method ... 10
1.4. Phases of the research ... 10
1.5. Resources required ... 12
1.6. Risks management ... 12
2. LITERATURE REVIEW ... 13
2.1. Event organization ... 14
2.2. Event organization in Smart City environments: Barcelona case ... 14
2.3. Importance of real meetings ... 15
2.4. Social networking services (SNS) ... 16
2.5. Location-based social networks (LBSNs) ... 17
2.6. Event-Based Social Networks (EBSNs) ... 18
2.7. Leisure and entertainment importance ... 19
2.8. Leisure and entertainment classification ... 20
2.9. Popular services ... 22
3. PROTOTYPING ... 29
3.1. Requirements verification ... 29
3.2. Application design ... 32
3.3. Implementation ... 36
4. TESTING AND EVALUATION... 40
4.1. Comparative analysis ... 40
4.2. User experience testing ... 41
5. CONCLUSION ... 49
5.1. Future work ... 52
REFERENCES ... 53
APPENDICES ... 57
Appendix A: A survey for a requirement verification ... 57
Appendix B: Screen mockups ... 59
Appendix С: Site screenshots ... 66
ABBREVIATIONS
EBSN Event-Based Social Network
LBSN Location-Based Social Network
SNS Social Networking services
RSVP Intent to join the event online (“yes”, “no” or “maybe”)
CMCS Computer – Mediated Communication System
UX User Experience
SUS System Usability Scale
reference model of the smart city. Urban policy of such models gains the urban growth with social and environmental sustainability achieved by issues of intelligent communities, green cities and innovative ecosystems.
Figure 1. Smart city conceptual reference model [1]
The core of any successful smart environment is distributed and open information storage for implementation of all kinds of smart city systems and applications so that they could
intercommunicate and share information between each other. For example, all the important smart city monitoring processes are provided by open smart digital resources, so the city should be able to moderate and integrate information from them [2]. Constant Internet evolution gives novel opportunities for development of smart city’s open web services through linked and open data. Technology advances are getting widely distributed in every aspect of citizen lives making every process more simple and efficient, which is tending to be overwhelmingly present in large urbanistic cities. While solutions commonly lead to automation, people usually loose portion of social interaction. Such approach may cause not a social disaster, but complicate relationships between men individually or generally, even ending up in a new pernicious culture model, with a bright example of present Japan, which is highly a developed country, but also peaking a social anxiety [3]. It is worth to mention that the smart city applications of the largest smart cities like Barcelona, Amsterdam, Edinburgh are at initial phase of implementation [4, 5]. Sociology always considered real life social interactions as an important human need [5], but nowadays necessity of the motivational tool is required in order to establish a good healthy environment for social interaction enhancement. One of the ways for achieving the goal are event-based social networks, which provide not only online communications as it is realized in any other social network, but also offer users an opportunity to meet in real life [6].
1.1. The research Problem
Nowadays numerous event based social networks have been created, but mostly they have quite specific main topic, or they are not popular for a wide range of people that leads to difficulties in finding them and their poor filling. Also, there is a problem with collecting and organizing information about different leisure and entertainment events in one place. So, the aim of this work is to develop a web service that could become a platform for connecting people with common interests and (helping them in/giving them an opportunity for) organizing their meetings in real life.
Human person has a social nature. Developing social relationships each person is establishing basics starting from families, then governments and finally the whole global economy [7]. But today people are more interested in developing technologies then relations. The master thesis is
which are conveniently placed on a map. All events have their own features for more qualitative organization process like limited number of members, total duration and others. Map is a simple way to find the closest events with like-minded people wherever the user is.
However, it is not possible to evaluate each specific area of leisure and entertainment in the borders of one project, thus the one test case is chosen – social dance, as one of the most essential, accessible and useful human activity, popular worldwide. Nevertheless, the interface of service shall be oriented on multi-access for different areas, but with only one implemented module for the social dance area test-case.
1.2. Research objectives and questions
The thesis contains four research questions:
1. How can we design a service for event organizations?
2. How can we classify many possibilities in selection an event in a user-friendly manner?
3. How to raise the motivation and promote the usage of such kind of service by different social groups?
4. How can we test the user experience?
Tasks and objectives of the research:
1. To evaluate the importance of meeting people in real life and the contribution of Event- Based Social Networks in it.
2. To collect relevant articles about organizing events and Event-Based Social Networks for leisure and entertainment
3. To describe the interconnection of smart city environments and leisure and entertainment, explaining its relevance to the research topic.
4. To determine classification of leisure and entertainment.
5. To evaluate pros and cons of typical services and solutions for organizing leisure and entertainment events.
6. To determine the features that traditional Event-Based Social Networks do not have to perfectly fit for organizing different kinds of events.
7. To evaluate in which way the service could be profitable or at least self-supportive.
8. To create a questionnaire, to analyze user experience.
9. Based on the analysis of obtained data define the requirements for the service that would be the most suitable for organizing leisure and entertainment events.
10. To develop the service design, according to determined requirements.
11. To develop the web service prototype with all the necessary features defined by the analysis.
12. To test the web service prototype.
13. To evaluate the usability test.
1.3. Research method
The nature of this research is combination of exploratory and descriptive studies with a cross- sectional time horizon. The methodology used is multimethod quantitative and qualitative with deductive approach. The research focuses on the literature review and case studies to answer research questions. The survey method is conducted with questionnaires for designing and usability purposes. Different scientific databases are used for data collection and analysis:
Springer, IEEE, ACM, Science direct and Emerald. The philosophy of the research is positivism.
1.4. Phases of the research
The research process consists of 6 phases:
1. Planning phase 2. The conceptual phase 3. Phase of construction 4. Empiric phase
Figure 2. Planning the research phases Phase of conception
The next research phase contains multiple tasks:
1. Problem analysis: research questions and purpose formulation.
2. Literature review: analysing information from sources with related topics Phase of construction
Designing a prototype of the web service.
Empiric phase
The purpose of this phase is testing of the designed prototype and answering the questionnaire by test group of users.
Analytic phase
User experience analysis, including survey and prototype testing data.
Reporting phase
All the collected data, including literature review, research results, implementation review and conclusions, is presented as a master thesis.
1.5. Resources required
Project Resourcing
Personal computer with necessary software is required for providing the research.
Staffing Plan
One person is enough, no additional stuff is required.
Budget
Necessary budget is 5€/month for hosting and domain payments, where the web service prototype is tested. Estimated total of 15€ for a project.
1.6. Risks management
The research is restricted with time borders and needs to be well planned: research should be realistic, thus no overthinking is required, building solution shall be clearly highlighted, to exclude the risk of time and budget excess. The lack of knowledge of the best technology for case might cause troubles in developing prototype after the design proposal. The solution must be well designed, tested and presented for user, otherwise it might not get accepted. The solution must be self-supporting in order to stay online, thus the market solutions should be well analyzed.
1.7. Outcomes of the research The main research outcomes are:
1. Completed design of the service
2. Master thesis (research project report) publication
smart city, Leisure and entertainment, Leisure and entertainment event organization, Leisure and entertainment smart city, Social dance event organization, Event based social network, Event based social networks, EBSNs, Event organization application, Smart city application UX (user experience), Leisure and entertainment application UX, Social dance application UX, Leisure and entertainment classification, Social dance classification. Search performed in the range of years 2011 and 2018. Results are presented in tables 1-3.
Table 1. Articles in databases
Database name Organizing events
Event organization
Event organization smart city
Leisure and entertainment
Leisure and entertainment event organization
Springer 238268 295912 12379 7762 3312
IEEE 930 1438 9 25 1777
ACM 38047 38052 48407 192669 192737
ScienceDirect 65640 218202 5000 3631 1220
Emerald 29717 29614 901 1369 758
Table 2. Articles in databases
Database name Leisure and entertainment smart city
Social dance event organization
Event based social network
Event organization application
Smart city application UX
Springer 913 13995 151264 153868 232
IEEE 1 7332 1026 367 42779
ACM 192730 70884 127306 90929 78030
ScienceDirect 322 3281 83336 120752 101
Emerald 85 1079 14732 23431 5
Table 3. Articles in databases
Database name
Leisure and entertainment application UX
Social dance application UX
Leisure and entertainment classification
Social dance classification
Event based social networks
EBSNs
Springer 28 53 1591 5572 151190 19
IEEE 1607 11604 1 4 1026 10
ACM 192949 97715 192694 47430 127650 14
ScienceDirect 23 52 971 2136 83312 12
Emerald 5 0 570 526 14732 0
2.1. Event organization
When talking about the leisure and entertainment event organization the best thing to begin with is considering the event organization in general, especially event organization in terms of smart city environment. A lot of nuances appear when meeting transfers from the website to real life.
Growing popularity of social networks dramatically changed our ways of life and communication habits. Now web sources are playing an important role in planning and organizing offline events. Researches pay much attention to studying the processes of people meeting, forming groups and attracting new members because they consider them to have a potential to influence on opinion formation and decisions making [8]. Special case of such groups are groups that form online but communicate offline that hardens for scientists their studying. In general, it is found that group forming processes are extremely different from personal activities. Social structures appearing inside groups usually consist of people who didn’t know each other before, thus they have an opportunity to make new acknowledgments and even friends [8].
2.2. Event organization in Smart City environments: Barcelona case
Information and communication technology influence the way in which city processes such as, for example, policymaking and urban growth are organized. In case of smart cities, the field of technology applications is spread to economics, transport and environment protection for transforming city infrastructure and services by information and communication services. The positive effect on urban growth inspired most of the cities in Europe and USA to start applying the smart city approach. The most successful case of smart city and what is more important the first smart city is Barcelona which has been saving the position in top European cities for the past 10 years. Barcelona is the second largest city of Spain and its main strategy is to become a knowledge-intensive city. Nowadays there are more than 400 research centers working on creation, distribution and use of knowledges. Besides, the leading aim for smart city Barcelona is fostering competitiveness [9].
Initially the concept of smart city is created for promotion of innovations, creating novel communication channels, supporting the open access to information and improving the efficiency of public services. Recently, the Barcelona City Hall became a participant of the Open
2.3. Importance of real meetings
With rising popularity of social networks, the social relationships have significantly developed and transformed to a digital format. The other side of such progress is growing psychosocial malady of loneliness. More than 25% adults in United Kingdom feel lonely sometimes and 6%
of them are feeling so practically all the time. Especially elderly generation is suffering: 19,3%
of people older than 65 years in USA complained on feeling lonely. Both literature and Internet sources confirm the influence of web technologies growing popularity on rising feeling of loneliness of users [10]. Even though a lot of different leisure and entertainment options are available online, some people still prefer offline events with real people. It was proved that social interactions between real people are more valuable and positive than online conversations [11, 12]. Another research [13] provided an experiment with two types of teams: face-to-face and virtual. Each team consisted of three members who was solving an information-sharing task.
Totally 13 virtual and 11 face-to-face teams participated in survey: teams used asynchronous CMCS (computer-mediated communication system) or face-to-face communications depending on their type. Results showed that the exchanging information process was same, and successful in both types of teams, but members of face-to-face groups were more satisfied with interaction process. The same conclusions were made for comparison of the phone calls and emails effectiveness in case of communication between two people [14]. Email messages occurred to be less useful than phone calls or personal conversation with aim of developing and maintaining relationships. People's relationships that mostly take place in the Internet are considered to be less close and qualitative then ones maintained by other means.
2.4. Social networking services (SNS)
Nowadays social networking services tend to be the most popular activities on internet. The statistic illustrated on figure 3 provides information about the amount of active accounts in the most popular social networks worldwide as of April 2018. Facebook, top leader currently has 2.234 billion of active users in a month, another popular photo-sharing network Instagram has 813 million monthly active users and rather novel messenger Telegram already has 200 million active users. SNS means social networking service (or site – both terms are frequently used).
This term combines technical features and purposes of use, shows the mobile, collective, and dynamic practice of social interactions. The service is a rapidly changing phenomenon both in terms of technological features and usage patterns. The structure of each element in network has been modified numerous times during the existence of a network, for example a feed line in Facebook.
Figure 3. Most popular networks worldwide as of April 2018 [15]
Users keep their information up to date, placing texts, photos and locations describing their thoughts or news that happen in real life. In future such accounts can be used as a life story, even after the user’s death [16].
2.5. Location-based social networks (LBSNs)
Recent achievements in broadband wireless networks development and location determination improvements allowed users to have a ubiquitous access to the web from their devices, wherever they are. Also, it led to the appearance of location-based services for sharing the location related information straight from the mobile devices for improving the collaborative social knowledge.
LBSNs are a type of social networking platform where users can share their geographic location information with each other to enable additional social dynamics. The general idea is shown in Figure 4: users visiting locations in the real world can share geo-tagged information content with others (e.g. comments, photos, videos) [17].
Figure 4. Visual representation of users, locations and content [17]
Sharing a location information in an existing social network is not the only function of LBSN, it is also a social structure by itself, where humans are connected by the interdependency derived from their locations in the physical world or same for their location-embedded information like photos, videos and texts. Moreover, interdependency means not only connection of two people in the same location, but also their personal information about common interests, hobbies, activities from their location and location-tagged data (including history) [18, 19]. Symeonidis et al define LBSN as the Special category of Social Network, having all its functions, but considers the location as the core object of its structure [20]. This master thesis project uses user’s geolocation for building a map of events.
2.6. Event-Based Social Networks (EBSNs)
Increasing popularity of online social services lead to appearing a new type of event-based social service. This type of networking service provides easier possibility for a user in creating social events proposals, distribution of proposals to other users and controlling the participants list.
For better communications functions these services contain online social networking platforms that allow users to communicate with each other. Further description can be considered with two examples of event-based social services: Meetup and Plancast. Meetup is an online social event platform that can be used for creating and participating in events by users. Each event contains detailed description of the meeting place, time and its conception. After filling the required information event can be published for all or selected users that can further join the event. For promoting users’ interactions there is also an option for them to form social groups with shared photo, comments and plans. Plancast is another web service for creation and organization of events online. It uses similar system of joining events by users, but the difference is that Plancast allows users to “follow” others’ social event calendars for creating online connections [14]. A special term describes the process of user’s answering on event invitation:
RSVP – it is a French phrase abbreviation that means “please respond” [21]. When user is answering “yes”, “maybe” or “no” for showing his or her willingness to participate in event, the answer may be shared with the followers, encouraging them to join.
ESBNs differs from other networks by combining online and offline forms of social interactions.
Another important feature of ESBN is so that it connects people by their common interests, they may not know each other before, on contrast with traditional social networks which are used for
2.7. Leisure and entertainment importance
For a usual person leisure time means that he will do any activity except of his work. Leisure activities are needed to de-stress human, divert his mind from work and give him a sense of self.
Each one can choose type of activity that would bring a flow of positive energy into his body to show how it is important to have a rest. Moreover, people start thinking and working better if they are positive enough. Absence of any physical activities can cause serious problems with both physical and mental health, because doing enjoyable activity can increase self-esteem.
Furthermore, participating in group activities makes people closer, especially if they are family or friends. This is why it is important to find time for leisure [23].
Leisure and entertainment have an influence not only on a person's daily life, but on the state of the whole society. Satisfaction with the quality and accessibility of entertainment forms a social status of a person and indicates the development of the country’s economy in whole and its social sphere in particular.
The global leisure and entertainment industry is accumulating billions of dollars and is an important part of the economy of most countries. Despite the scale of the leisure and entertainment industry, the system of economic knowledge in this field of research is ambiguous. The issues of not only management and marketing remain open - the conceptual apparatus and basic theoretical positions of the field under study are not fully formed. In the entertainment industry, in addition to concert halls, casinos, cinemas, there are parks, attractions, nightclubs, Internet cafes, water parks, etc. This can include businesses that organize sports and entertainment events, as well as physical culture (for example, swimming pools, sports halls, etc.). Some cultural enterprises (libraries, museums, exhibitions) can relate to leisure and entertainment [24].
2.8. Leisure and entertainment classification
Maslow stated that all the person’s needs, that he is motivated to achieve, can be placed in a certain order: the most basic need is to survive – it will be the first need that defines the person’s behavior. When the basic needs are fulfilled the next one, psychological, that includes communications, motivates the behavior. And only after satisfying this level of needs the next ones appear – this system is called Maslow’s hierarchy levels of needs, usually shown as a pyramid (see Figure 5) [25].
Figure 5 – Maslow’s pyramid of needs [25]
Variety in the leisure and entertainment industry is recognized by all as a virtue, but at the same time is an important factor hampering the management of these facilities. Most of the existing definitions of the leisure and entertainment industry are reduced to the listing of activities classified as leisure and entertainment. However, this approach does not reveal the specifics of the activity of enterprises engaged in entertainment of people and does not reflect the type of need for which they are oriented. It is generally known that leisure entertainment directly affects the spiritual state. Through leisure and entertainment, a person satisfies his spiritual, intellectual or physiological needs, evaluates himself as a person, analyzes his role in various situations and social systems, receives a charge of emotions and thrills [24]. Active leisure activities are different kinds of energetic activities such as dancing, surfing, swimming, climbing or even trying the adventure sports. Passive leisure activities can mean absolute relaxation, for example watching a movie with friends, reading a book or visiting a spa [22].
4. Prestigious in a certain environment (closed to the mass visitor entertainment facilities) Meetup classification provides.
Leisure and entertainment classification is a challenging task because of the possible coverage.
Normally, available services are not providing categories at all, however some of them reached that goal. There is a category classification provided by Meetup, one of the most successful event platforms featuring 35 million auditory [26]. Meetup divides categories on the general topics and subtopics. Then, the most visited categories are getting highlighted for the main page, while the less popular categories and subtopics can be found in a topic browse section.
Considering a vast audience, we can assume category classification that should be used in a prototype. The most popular categories are:
• Outdoors & Adventure
• Tech
• Family
• Health & Wellness
• Sports & Fitness
• Learning
• Photography
• Food & Drink
• Writing
• Language & Culture
• Music
• Movements
• Film
• Sci-Fi & Games
• Beliefs
• Arts
• Book clubs
• Dance
• Pets
• Hobbies & crafts
• Fashion & Beauty
• Social
• Career & Business
2.9. Popular services Meetin [http://meetin.org/]
Meetin is a web-service for bringing people together from all over for low-key events without paying membership fees. Service consists of number of social groups personifying different cities to run events with the aim of meeting new people and making new friends. Major points of the service are that it is open for everyone despite of the status and it is not commercial at any point, run by volunteers, thus completely free. Now social groups host around 30 cities all over the world and nonexistent ones can be applied throw email. Also, service has variety of small functions like classifieds. Nonetheless, service has disadvantages connected with very bad usability and poor design. The site is looking unattractive and is not comfortable to use. Figure 6 represents social group page.
Figure 6 – Meetin service
WITHME [https://itunes.apple.com/app/withme-find-your-team-best-news-your-own-guide- for/id994102307?l=en&mt=8]
WITHME is an application designed for Android and iOS. The key idea of the project is of quickly running events right from the pocket to find new friends, emotions and discover yourself. It is aimed mainly for leisure, sports or hobby categories and has a variety of options for event setup, i.e. time, place, activity type, age range. Application provides filter for monitoring events, and moreover a navigation pathing to events, which is a unique feature upon such kind of applications. Another advantage of WITHME is an application design well rated by users. However, there are also some disadvantages: mentioned filter has a very limited options of only date and distance, as well as application is poorly tested and has a variety of critical bugs. Figure 7 illustrates key features of the application.
Figure 7 – WITHME application
Meetme [https://www.meetme.com/]
Meetme is a multiplatform service for socializing. Platform provides tools similar to dating services so nearby people could easily interact. One interesting feature and the main advantage of the service is a filtering option that allows to see and track the nearest users exactly by distance. On the other hand, it would be challenging for user to find people, especially a group, by interest as service gives no specific interface related to events creation or participation. Figure 8 provides application screens.
Figure 8 – Meetme application
Meetup [https://www.meetup.com/]
Meetup is another multiplatform application oriented on community. Unlike previous services it is not only aimed for leisure, but for any kind of human interactions upon interest, i.e. carrier options. The service is extremely developed and has a large community. It offers a vast range of different categories and a friendly design, as advantage allowing user to sign for non-existent activities for someone to host them later. It is worth to mention that service is free, but also has a paid subscription option to use full set of tools, which again are oriented towards professional interactions, but not leisure events organization itself. The disadvantages of the systems are still limitations in categories, inability to operate with maps, thus a not comfortable filtering options with a local area restriction. Figure 9 demonstrates interface of the service.
Figure 9 – Meetup service
Smacktive [http://www.smacktive.com/]
Smacktive is an application for mobile platforms designed as a real meet-in-person social network for doing activities of interest. However, it is focused primarily on sports activities with an idea of finding company of equal skill. Regarding design, application is easy understandable and has a notable notification system, but as a drawback user is allowed to login only via his Facebook account, which doesn’t suit everyone and by the moment of review was bugged for iOS users. Design of the application is presented on figure 10.
Figure 10 – Smacktive application
GroupSpaces [http://groupspaces.com/]
Groupspaces is a self-serve online platform for managing membership groups. Service provides a variety of powerful administrative tools like no other for easy management of any kind of groups, from e-mail newsletter tool to online payments. Upon creation groups are divided on categories like local, business, college, etc. Such approach makes user to be a part of specific
community network, for example Lappeenranta University of Technology, so an attendee can easily find events of his place. For all that the service is limiting options for a free use, offering a different subscription plans starting with 14.99$ per month. Also, it is not possible to browse or filter the list of groups or events on the service itself as each group receives a unique domain.
Figure 11 shows an example of group page.
Figure 11 – Groupspaces platform Kudago [https://kudago.com/new-york/]
Kudago is a web-service oriented towards finding respective events in big cities. It is designed in the way of gathering and promoting interesting events to fulfill leisure of citizens. It is worth to mention that events are mostly aimed for leisure and entertainment, representing categories respectively. The drawback of the service is a commercial direction and a heavy focus on event promotion, thus event placement costs significant value and is not worth non-considering big organizations. Likewise, the majority of events are most likely non-free and are some kind of advertisement. Nonetheless, the site is an example of an attractive design and a good usability.
Figure 12 illustrates the main page of the site.
Figure 12 – Kudago service
Facebook [https://www.facebook.com] & VK [https://vk.com]
Facebook and VK are one of the largest social networks in the world with Facebook heading the first-place world with an average of 22.2 billions of active users monthly [15] and VK as a rank one European social network with a 2.2 billions of active users monthly [27]. They follow the similar aim and provide services that have a lot in common. The continuous growth of the services led to the expansion of available options for users like event features. It is possible to create events and participate in them, using the social network as a promotion tool, which is a sufficient advantage due to large auditory. However, there are no specific tools to track those events in an organized manner or apply any filter, hence the advantage of big auditory can transform into drawback of impossibility to track down valuable event. Or, for example, if a person is new to the service, he most likely will miss upcoming events simply because of the insufficient friend list or group participatory, which are the major sources of news for social networks. Overall, there are plenty of scenarios in which the lack of necessary tools will drastically reduce the advantage of service popularity. Nevertheless, in favorable cases Facebook and VK might be the best choices for quick event organization and attendance. Figure 13 shows the event pages of the services.
Figure 13 – Facebook and VK services
To sum up, there is a plenty of different services that help people in finding interesting events, making new connections or organizing their leisure. Many different services are achieving the goal in a unique manner respectively with their aims and needs. However, that makes them provide a set of tools which could be as potential as completely useless. After the analysis none of the services showed the complete suitability for leisure and entertainment event organization in the expected manner. Table 4 represents a comparison of reviewed services for important features. The prototype is expected to fulfill the gaps and provide the best usability and experience.
Table 4. Comparative analysis of the services
Features
Meetin WITHME Meetme Meetup Smacktive Groupspaces Kudago Facebook & VK
Categories - - - - + + + -
Event attendance + + - + + + - +
Event creation + + - + + + - +
Interaction with map
+ + + + - - + +
Filtering option - + + + - + + -
Member list management
- - - + - + - +
Stability + - - + + + + +
Usability design - - + + + + + +
Fully free + + - - + - + +
to be accessible. Initial service structure is illustrated on figure 14. Note that structure is proposed with a considering of dancing events case scenario.
Figure 14. Initial service structure
However, at the current stage proposed structure can serve only as a mind map draft, and requirements shall be determined for further structure updates and mockups creation.
3.1. Requirements verification
As we were observing available solutions, we experienced that every service had certain issues from the user perspective. Therefore, we have conducted a survey, following the user experience to clarify the requirements for the services functionality.
The survey
The proposed web service shall provide a set of features to allow users easily track and participate in events of the certain leisure and entertainment area. After specifying the area user can take a role of organizer, suggesting the description and details of event, or attendant role, to browse existent events and choose the most suitable ones. The survey is conducted for users to determine what features are more or less important for them, and it was divided into 2 parts for
event attendee and event organizer perspectives. Service is estimated to be used by a different age groups, therefore there were no restrictions for participants of the survey. Survey results represents an opinion of people aged between 15 and 48 years old. Survey statistics are illustrated on screenshots that are in the Appendix A. Figure A – 1 reveals the statistics related to event attendees, while figure’s A – 2 statistics are related towards event organizers.
Survey result analysis
34 respondents took a part in a survey. First question was aimed towards highlighting the key features of the service gathered throw observing popular solutions and combined with initial structure proposal. An absolute majority of people consider categories option (85.3%), use of map (85.3%), event search option (88.2%) and filter option (73.5%) to be the most important.
Features like navigation pathing to events, social interaction elements, feedback option, themed advertisement, themed wiki, a page for official representatives were valuably voted with mediocre result of 54%, while the lowest result was for blogging opportunity (29.4%), which is still significant. Interesting point, that potential users proposed some new features: usage of QR code links, possibility of linking social networks with the service, embedding a taxi services in order to quickly arrive at event.
Second questions gave the answer on user preferences regarding event browsing. As we can see options strictly connected to planning like type (67.6%), location (91.2%), date and time (97.1%) and description (73.5%) are the highest priorities. People are less concerned about information of organizer (50%), people limits (32.4%), friend’s attendance (38.2%) and possible fee’s (58.8%).
The following question was crucial concerning the feature design choice as map was proposed to be a core around which the rest services would be built. 73.5 % of respondents greeted this unique feature, 23.5% were doubting and only 2.9% were negative. Such results display readiness of the users for new, unusual approaches.
Regarding the next question 52.9% decided that tags are necessity addition for a search option, while 32.4% were not sure and 14.7% were not concerned. Also, 47.1% found that it would be useful to receive notifications during the service usage, although 35.3% had no clear opinion and 17.6% voted against, which is significant. This poll shows that notifications can be annoying
can tell, that every specific user has his needs, but overall it is better to have unnecessary functions in a pocket rather than miss them a single time we need.
As for organizational part of survey, only 8.8% of participants were not concerned about maintainability for the list of attendees, feedback acquirement, RSVP and deadline options, while the absolute majority welcomed these features. Again, regarding notifications it is unobvious, as 52.9% voted for and 17.6% against, reminding us of discussion in the attendee survey section.
Final requirements
At this stage final requirements for the service are determined. All proposed features are divided into major and minor ones, so that service focuses on key points without unnecessary time investments for others, and at the same time to provide extra tools in case of need. For attendees the interface must provide options of quick and comfortable event browsing, searching with keywords or tags, use of map, use of categories, filtering options like date, category, region.
User should be able to provide a feedback, using comments, ratings or reports, receive notifications, keep a blog. For event organization the interface must provide the following features: date and time, location, description, categories, contact details. Organizer should be able to maintain the event and list of attendees, use of RSVP, tags, to setup a final date and time for registration opportunity, and appoint fee or people limit. Tables 5 and 6 represent the major and minor features for regular user for event attendance and organization.
Table 5. Features for event attendance
Features Major Minor
Event browsing X
Event categories X
Use of map X
Event search (keywords) X
Event search (tags) X
Search filter (date and time) X
Search filter (category) X
Search filter (region) X
Feedback (comments) X
Feedback (rating) X
Feedback (report) X
Notifications X
Blog option X
Table 6. Features for event organization
Features Major Minor
Date and time X
Location X
Description X
Categories X
Contact details X
Event maintenance X
RSVP X
Tags X
Fee X
Member limit X
Deadline for registration X
3.2. Application design
Designing an application structure
It is important to follow certain rules while implementing a web application structure for achieving a respectable level of usability. It is crucial for user experience to reduce the amount of time user will spend interacting with the service to achieve his goal. Therefore, all major features are located at the top level, while minor features are embedded or minimized. Figure 15 represents the site map for major features of the service.
Figure 15. Service structure The service mockups
This section contains mockups for the prototype development. Balsamiq mockup tools were chosen, as they provide an excellent design, stability and useful features for effective building multiplatform application mockups [28]. In this chapter several of the mockups presented, the rest are in Appendix B.
Figure 16. Service main page
The ideal structure of the page of the service (figure 16) is mainly built with map, header and active page information. Header consists of 5 tabs: activities, events, groups, social and “more”
tab, which contains minor features. Also, it provides login and search options (figure 17).
In order to fully interact with the site features user has to register and login (Appendix B, Figure B – 1). Register is a standard form with a small set of required information: name, address, username, password and password confirmation. After login, user is additionally allowed to manage profile, see activities, attend and create events, use social features, keep blog or make
“wiki” material.
Figure 17. Main page with applied activity filter and log on
Profile page allows to change personal information, avatar, credentials, manage friends and use private messages (Appendix B, Figure B – 2). It also provides a widget for a specific news feed setup.
Activity page provides site feed and can be filtered for any specific site activity, like certain type of event, or user’s feed, or user’s friends feed (Appendix B, Figure B – 3).
Events page provides list of events, calendar, map, list of user’s events (Appendix B, Figure B – 4). At this page user can browse, attend or create events. The search has advanced filter for date, region, event type (category), and some social filters. Event list tab provides short
of spots remaining and end date of registration, program setup feature and feedback options (Appendix B, Figure B – 10). Events search contains advanced filter options, so the user can narrow down search result, using date and time, region, type options. Also it allows to track events user is attending, created or his friends attending.
Groups page represents categories (Appendix B, Figure B – 8). Here user can choose a specific type of events and receive information regarding category. Also, user can create a new category.
The specific category group page (Appendix B, Figure B – 9) gives an opportunity to join and invite friends, maintain group information, provide feedback, browse, create and join category events. The page has title, group avatar, description, group tags, blog, discussions thread, activity feed, “wiki” group and events tab.
Minor features are under the “more” tab. At members page user is eligible to track and contact service members (Appendix B, Figure B – 11). Blog page allows easier interaction with site blogs browsing and feedback production for site blogs, user’s or user friend’s blogs (Appendix B, Figure B – 12). “Wiki” page has similar functions as blog page, but regarding site notes (Appendix B, Figure B – 13).
Map as a center of the service
With ideal case scenario map plays the core role of the service while the rest of the features are built around it. The smart map feature should get implemented with an idea of automatically zooming for the best experience of event location. By this design choice user is always concerned about what happens around. Also, it solves several usability problems.
Main search on the website
Throughout the whole service, there is a search input where a user can search for interested events throughout the whole site. At this case tagging option might be very useful. With the time spent on service user will acquire a preference and recommendation list.
Feedback options
Service provides three ways to provide feedback. First, user can interact with almost every feature of the service, so they are staying in touch with organizers and other users. For evaluation purpose the simple rating system is proposed via “like” option. Finally, every page has a quick link for a report form, in case of bugs or some inappropriate actions.
3.3. Implementation
Technical details
For implementation part Elgg framework was used [https://elgg.org/]. Ellg is an open source social web software that uses Windows, Apache, Mysql, Php platform. The main advantages of the framework that it is oriented towards social networking, thus provides some necessary features, as well as it has plugin architecture, which allows a flexible and effective integration process [25]. Another plus is stability, and at the worst case it is comparatively easy to make a backup. Moreover, the framework gives on opportunity to build the cross-platform application.
Overall, Elgg is an essential, highly extendable framework for building social oriented services [48]
When creating a web service, it is important to take into account that its server’s location should be closer to potential users in order to provide a faster connection. The service is about to be tested in Europe, therefore it was decided to choose Nederlands server as the closest point.
Overall structure
At the highest level, the system contains:
• A source directory (with the source files and development infrastructure),
• Data directory (which contains all the data, the system has to save, such as uploaded files, images, etc.).
web site is familiar to most of the users, they feel safe as there is no need to download an unknown app. For more improving the system usability it is also important to pay attention to the colors that are used in design because they usually affect user’s behavior while interactiong with the service.
Color theme
Color plays an important role in marketing: it creates associations between brands and industries, it drives consumer’s emotions and creates emotional cues, it is even able to influence on purchasing decisions. Human brain makes a decision in less than 90 seconds, in case of evaluating the product its color has up to 90% contribution in the forming person’s opinion [32].
As for leisure and entertainment there are two suitable colors for theming which are red and blue. Blue is considered as the safest color choice around the world, since it has many positive associations. Also, blue represents trust, security, and authority. On other hand, red symbolizes excitement, energy, passion, action and love in Western cultures. In Asian cultures red is a very important color — it symbolizes good luck, joy, prosperity, celebration, happiness, and a long life. In India red is associated with purity, sensuality, and spirituality [33].
The survey (Figure 18) is made to understand which color people associate most with leisure and entertainment. The respondents were proposed to choose one of the two given colors with miniatures, which on their opinion better fits for the leisure and entertainment.
Figure 18. Associated colors statistics
Prototype
This section provides the screenshots of the prototype, implemented for master thesis. Figure illustrates several screenshots of the prototype, the screenshots of other screens are in the Appendix C. The application is tested and optimized for mobile devices. Screenshots for mobile devices are provided in the Appendix D and Appendix E. The application is available on the following link: http://smartleisu.temp.swtest.ru/.
The core page of the service is a categories group where user can pick a category and start browsing events he is interested in (Appendix C, Figure C – 8). All major features are connected with this page. Here user can create a new category which he is passioned on. 24 categories classified in literature review are presented. The filtering options are available for user.
The specific category group page (Appendix C, Figure C – 9) gives an opportunity to join and invite friends, maintain group information, provide feedback, browse, create and join category events. The page provides an information on title, group avatar, description, group tags, blog, discussions thread, activity feed, “wiki” group and events tab. An event tab provides the full set of functions as the event page, but with category filter applied.
In order to fully interact with the site features user has to register and login (Appendix C, Figure C – 1). Before login user is allowed only to browse some pages, while the most of information will be hidden. Register is a standard form with a small set of required information: name,
setup where user can quickly access any information related with him.
Figure 19. Categories group page
Activity page provides site feed and can be filtered for any specific site activity, like certain type of event, or user’s feed, or user’s friends feed (Appendix C, Figure C – 3).
Events page provides list of events, calendar, map, list of user’s events (Appendix C, Figure C – 4). At this page user can browse, attend or create events. The search has advanced filter for date, region, event type (category), and some social filters. Event list tab provides short
description of the events and ratings (Appendix C, Figure C – 4). Calendar tab provides calendar’s view for events with filters for time ranges (Appendix C, Figure C – 5). Map tab provides a view of events on the map, event pins are highlighted with colors for the different types of events (Appendix C, Figure C – 6). List of user’s events provides a feed for events related to user. Event information page consists of title, date and time, description, map with route planning, attached files, contact details, tags, register to event option, with RSVP, type, number of spots remaining and end date of registration, program setup feature and feedback options (Appendix C, Figure C – 10). Events search contains advanced filter options, so the user can narrow down search result, using date and time, region, type options. Also, it allows to track events user is attending, created or his friends attending.
Minor features are minimized to the “more” tab. At members page user is eligible to track and contact service members (Appendix C, Figure C – 11). Blog page allows easier interaction with site blogs browsing and feedback production for site blogs, user’s or user friend’s blogs (Appendix C, Figure C – 12). “Wiki” page has similar functions as blog page, but regarding site notes (Appendix C, Figure C – 13).
4. TESTING AND EVALUATION
This section contains information about service usability testing: comparative analysis with other services, literature review on this topic and final usability testing.
4.1. Comparative analysis
Table 7 provides comparison of different characteristics of the developed service with overviewed services, presented in section 2.9. Developed prototype for leisure and entertainment event organization contains every important feature we determined before. It provides categories, map interaction, event management, social elements as well as it is fully free. Finally, the service is stable and has good usability.
attendance
Event creation + + - + + + - + +
Interaction with map
+ + + + - - + + +
Filtering option - + + + - + + - +
Member list management
- - - + - + - + +
Stability + - - + + + + + +
Usability design - - + + + + + + +
Fully free + + - - + - + + +
4.2. User experience testing
Usability of the service is its main attribute that shows how easy and intuitive for user the system is. ISO 9241 – 11 defines usability as an extent with which a product can be used by specified users for achieving specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use [34].
Usability test is any experiment that can measure the interface quality or find the specific problem in it. The test only makes a product better.
The main outcomes of the test:
• Understanding the satisfaction extent with service work: is there anything to improve or it already works good enough.
• Comparison of different interface versions quality: if they need any changes or implementations.
• Detection of problematic service fragments.
How to make usability testing
Service efficiency can be measured by five main characteristics: the speed with which the user works, the time that he needs for training, the quantity of his mistakes, the user’s satisfaction with the system work and maintenance of learned skills.
Satisfaction can be measured in two different ways: asking user how does he or she like the service or noticing user’s reactions when he or she works with the service. Second way is quite relative and can be used more for comparison new and old versions of interface or the competitor’s service.
A good user experience test consists of:
• Respondents
• Testing method
• Testing scenarios
• Workplace for the test and the method of recording the answers
• The check of obtained data Respondents
First of all it is necessary to define the requirements to respondents for selecting them from the target audience.
How many users to test
The necessary quantity of respondents is questionable: researches have quite different opinions on this topic. The starting value of 5 users was suggested by Robert Virzi [35], Jacob Nielsen and Thomas Landauer agreed with this number in their article: “A mathematical model of the finding of usability problems” but added that for raising the test effectiveness up to 85% already 8 respondents are needed [36].
Articles “Why and when five test users aren’t enough” [37] and “Eight is Not Enough” [38]
dispute the adequacy of such a small respondent number, saying that this amount is not enough to find all the usability service problems.
risks. So, the respondents number in his opinion depends on the project: some projects require only one respondent, for another more than 10 may be needed.
Another conviction has Denis Wixon [39]. He believes that it is not the main problem to study how many respondents are needed. The purpose of any project is to create a project at a shortest time with the lowest price, so it’s a special design and usability team’s task to do their best in fixing all the possible problems during the project development. The same opinion has Jared Spool: he says that design team should test as many users as they are able considering their time limitations because any amount will already be better than zero [39].
Carol Barnum [39] created a list of rules that allows to use only 5 people for web testing:
• The original discount test model is always followed.
• The test results are clear and can be understood.
• The client is in close cooperation with the test team.
• The obtained test results are used for diagnostic purposes and team personnel learning.
• Expecting test result is comprehension, not validation.
In support of negative opinion Laura Faulkner in the article “Beyond the five-user assumption:
Benefits of increased sample sizes in usability testing” [40] also doubts that 5 users are enough for UX testing of any service. She states that for providing valid usability testing the respondents must be representative of the target population.
Summarizing the observed literature together with the article [41] where H. Kanis supports Deis Wixton’s point of view that number of participants in a testing will always be limited, because of time and budget constraints and article [42] that says that the main aim of testing is finding the defects of a user interface for the lowest cost, the conclusion can be made that the question on how many users is enough for the qualitative UX testing is still open.
